Sarah Peters is one of FFR’s interns. She, along with fellow intern Izzy Hathaway, manage the volunteer apartment, help organize donations, supervise shifts in the hospital and lend helping hands wherever they are needed. We are so thankful for our interns!

This November, Izzy, Rachel
and I had the privilege of attending a conference organized by the
alliance Romania Without Orphans. At the conference, we heard from
Romanian politicians, a director of social services, social workers,
families who have adopted, charity workers, church pastors and young
adults raised in institutions, now supporting other orphaned and
abandoned children.

Here discussions revolved around these views:

Children should not be raised by the state, but in a family.

Adoption
is not currently viewed as a priority by many in Romania, so we need to
motivate a culture of adoption across Romania, to care for the children
in institutional care.

All children have a voice, and where some children may have lost theirs, we should help them find it.

Children who have experienced trauma in their lives need love, support and safety – all children deserve that.

Supporting
families so they don’t have to leave the country for work, or abandon
their children, putting preventative and early intervention models in
place.

‘Because God cares about the orphaned and abandoned children, ‘si noua ne pasa’, we also care.

It
was a wonderful opportunity for us to network with other people working
in Romania with the same heart, and it was so inspiring to see so many
people, especially Romanians, committing to working towards ‘Romania
fara orfani’, Romania without orphans.